Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from French Grocery Stores

Dylan Glover, Amanda Pallais () and William Parienté ()
Additional contact information
Amanda Pallais: Harvard University and NBER

No 2016025, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: Examining the performance of cashiers in a French grocery store chain, we find that manager bias negatively affects minority job performance. In the stores studied, cashiers work with different managers on different days and their schedules are determined quasi-randomly. When minority cashiers, but not majority cashiers, are scheduled to work with managers who are biased (as determined by an Implicit Association Test), they are absent more often, spend less time at work, scan items more slowly, and take more time between customers. Manager bias has consequences for the average performance of minority workers: while on average minority and majority workers perform equivalently, on days where managers are unbiased, minorities perform significantly better than do majority workers. This appears to be because biased managers interact less with minorities, leading minorities to exert less effort.

Pages: 55
Date: 2016-10-21
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://sites.uclouvain.be/econ/DP/IRES/2016025.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from French Grocery Stores (2017)
Working Paper: Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from French Grocery Stores (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvir:2016025

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